But here are three principles. They're all tied together. You don't have one without the other. If you want to continue the idea of national election on into the New Testament of some will, and so they're trying to reconstruct particular distinctive and ask out logical futures for Jews as Jews, well, then you have to incorporate the whole package. And it would be in terms of the works principle that there would be a future for the national election. But that whole thing is unbiblical, but right now then works, then functions. We are trying to say at this second level, at this typological kingdom level of the old covenant. Grace is the substratum, is the foundational layer. Works has to do with this second. Now, it's this claim that I've made of finding works principle in the covenant with Adam, especially in the covenant with Israel. That is a challenge, why the challenge on many fronts of our day. And that we have to think about together. We want to see some of the biblical evidence than for it. So we could start at either point. And of course, to establish that there is a principle of works operating here would serve right away to show then that God does at times. A Jew is that principle of works and administering his kingdom. And that would be a useful place to start. But let's start here with Adam and in the pre-fall situation in the original creation covenant, which we have said was a works arrangement. Now, that is being challenged then. And I guess last week I didn't make mention of some names. And we'll let's just with the moment at least to deal with Dan Fuller, who was associated with fuller seminary. And he writes various books in which his main concern is to deny that at any point God has ever used the principle of works. And in fact, he speaks in terms of what's being diabolical of us to think that human beings could do. See, what's involved in this idea of works is that that man, God's creature, does something whereby he earns the reward. What's in view is the eschatological inheritance of heaven. How do you get there? And I've already tried previous week to make the point. You have to earn it. You have to merit the thing. Of course, we fail. Christ does it for us. That's the gospel. He does it for us, but he has to earn it. And now, that thought that it should be proposed to man, that he can do something that would earn the blessing of heaven. This, people of fuller in his school would say it's diabolical. It's arrogance. The man can't do anything. You see that that would be meritorious. And that would just be a way of earning heaven. And so it's a very fundamental challenge that's been issued. And I've tried to deal within in some of my writings. One of the things I've tried to write was an article that appeared in the Art Church magazine, New Horizons, a year or two ago called Covenant Theology Under Attack. And we have a few copies of it there. And Greg says that he can, if there's a demand for more than is available, there's just a three or four there, that he can keep one of those and make copies for others of you that might like some sort of make your desires known to Greg. And I'll make some use of that. And then you can pick up these subsequently. I'll use this copy of a thing. Now, I start the article out by emphasizing the importance of the active obedience of Christ. You see, how is it that heaven is earned? The first Adam failed and we can earn it any more by ourselves. But of course, it's precisely the role of our Lord, according to Romans 5, where it has said that the first Adam is a type of Christ. It's precisely then the role of Christ to pick up and to do that, which Adam failed to do. And Christ then is the one who, by his active obedience, merits for us heaven. So we distinguish, of course, in our Lord's obedience between his passive obedience, which emphasizes that which he did in order to bear the penalty that was due to our sins and suffer the wrath of God that that was due to us for our fallenness and sin in Adam. And that's the active obedience of Christ, the atonement, that achieves for us pardon and cleansing and forgiveness. And now I think as I also then were saying one of the last two times, that is great. And that's at the heart of the gospel, but it doesn't take you all the way. Because if it's only that, then we are back where Adam was at the beginning still having to earn heaven for himself. The slate is clear. There are no sins laid to his charge. The penalty for the sins has been there. But the task hasn't been accomplished still. The task that the first Adam was given there to do, which very precisely had to do with, as I put it last time, he had to win the Battle of Armageddon. Satan comes to the mountain of God to our Armageddon to challenge God and Adam's task, which to be on guard and to stand in the name of God and to resist and to judge and to repudiate Satan and thus to win the Battle of Armageddon there, right at the outset, he failed to do it. But this is now something that has to be done because this was the stipulated in God's covenant. This was the stipulation. This was the task. This is the way to get the blessing sanction, which was the award of heaven. This the way to earn heaven was to fight God's particular battle, something positive to do. And that's where the active obedience Christ of Christ comes in, that he then dies for our sins, laid as clear, but beyond that, huh? He also accomplishes the probationary task. He does it for us. He has earned it. Money can therefore be put on our imputed and to us and put on our bank account. We have earned heaven in Christ because he earned it for us. Therefore, it's not just that we are forgiven and that we are pardoned and justified in that sense. But we have received God's approbation. Well done, good and faithful servant. You have earned heaven because you are identified with Christ who earned it for you. That's the active obedience of Christ. That is marvelous. You see, this tells us that we're beyond probation. Therefore, we're not going to be fussing and feeling about what good works must I now do somehow along with my faith in order to stay on the road to heaven. If you see that you're beyond probation, then you won't be concerned about your good works in that sense. You will be doing your good works to the love of God for what he has done. But you won't be concerned about that this is part of it. You are doing something to earn it. It's been done for you. This is the active obedience of Christ. Now you can see that there's room for this idea of active obedience, which is then imputed to others where you have this one and many principle, Christ the one representing the managers as the one represents the man. You can have that arrangement only if there is something that can be accomplished, that can be imputed to someone else, these things. And this is the thing that is very much neglected, I think, in Christian theology, preaching, and so on, which is full of such consolation. I would think for all of us as believers and the people to whom we are ministering to be assured of this is not just that we are forgiven, but that Christ has parent heaven for it. You don't have to do anything to earn it. You're beyond probation. Now that wonderful idea puts a whole different mentality in the assurance in you. Now if you deny that there can be any such thing as a meritorious achievement, that's what fully does. You're bound to cut the whole scheme. And while this is what he proceeds to do, he rewrote a couple of books in the first one, he was concerned more with attacking the idea of works here. And now traditionally, then we speak about the law, gospel contrast there. So here's the gospel of saving faith, grace that Paul preaches. And so traditionally, we have talked about the contrast between law and gospel. That is the contrast between works and grace. Now this fellow four repudiated that in a book that he called gospel and law. And then the subtitle was contrast or continuum. So he talks about this classic problem of theology and gospel and law, which we have thought of as completely different graces. One thing, it works as the opposite, huh? Grace, what is grace? Grace is where God blesses you, in spite of the fact that you have forfeited his blessings. Grace is not merely God bestowing on you blessings which you haven't merited. It's not just unmerited blessings. No, it's much worse than that year problem. It isn't just that you haven't merited the blessing. It's that you've done the opposite. You have demerited the blessing. And that's the only place where grace says, any proper meaning, is as a response to a situation where the blessing has been forfeited by sin and rebellion. That's what grace is. Unmerited blessing doesn't nearly get you where the biblical idea is going. And the opposite of that is, of course, works where you do your self earn the blessing. And if you have forfeited the thing, you know, then there's no blessing to you. And if you have forfeited the thing, that's distinctively the work of grace. Now, that's a sharp contrast between. There's a big difference then between grace, between works where you have to earn the thing and grace where you get the blessing, in spite of the fact that you have demerited the thing, big difference between the two of the churches recognized that that different force is and is titled Gospel and Law. And then he asked the question, contrast, is there really a contrast between these two things where the church is alleged, or is there a continuum? So is there really a white and a black contrast or a series of grays in between? And he comes down, of course, in favor of series of grays. No sharp, there's things between the two. And of course, as soon as you do that, then everything gets foggy about the Gospel of grace. And it isn't the opposite of works. Oh, if you had the right idea of approbation, beyond approbation, everything is so clear. On this thing, somehow, now our works are playing a different role.
And as this point of view began to develop even in our own ecclesiastical circles then, we began to find that those who denied the law of Gospel contrast and were trying to suggest that all covenants were fundamentally the same. They all had demands, they all had promises, and so on, we were told. And so there's sort of a leveling out of all of the covenants and the theologians who were doing that, were soon muddling up the idea of justification. So that they were telling their students that works function with respect to justification the same way that faith does. And that you use the same prepositions to describe what works doing what faith does in a while. And now I'm not assured of my salvation in a more. If my works are functioning the same, that there's no clear cut act of faith whereby I have received Christ and all that he's done for me. And that's it. Now my own works somehow have to feed into the thing. And sanctification begins to be confused with justification. And the whole gospel is confused. And the people who hold that see that here there was a national election and Israel lost it. And there's really no big contrast between what was going on then and now that they're saying. And so if Israel could lose their election, well then it began to be fuzzy and they're right. And so then can we also lose our individual election? All these things begin to get blurred as soon as you deny that there is a sharp, absolute contrast between grace and work. So that's what's at stake in this whole thing. But now let's get back to... Yes sir. But some of the cars are seen all the time with the rack. No, not with my car, unless he holds to some views of more identifiable with some of the guys I've been working with. Does he associate with Fuller or Piper Hart? I don't really know. My impression is no, but I haven't read enough with my car. I didn't think that was that one. Initially, it looked like there was this blurring that you're warning us about. But in the second book, Jim's about clarifying... Oh, that's helpful. The door of the dark is on the car. There was a particular battle. He was fighting with not this battle. Because he was taking on the issue of those who were sort of denying that one had to have this award. We saved him. He was trying to emphasize that one couldn't have one without the other. Yeah, which in the sense he was arguing that there are still obligations even under the new covenant. Some of them may have misunderstood that to mean that those obligations are then works obligations in the sense that those obligations can merit something. And I don't think that was time to arrive. I read it a few years ago and it first came out that I think it was more he was trying to say there are works. And therefore, they also, therefore, you mean they must be meritorious. Some people here have to say no. I don't think they're meritorious. And they're like, if there are obligations, you can't have salvation apart from the ability actually to include the defecational curiosity and the final question of that whole thing. Yeah, I love it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's what we came up with in the last few years. And the Lordship. In the controversy within our own churches, it sometimes was thought to be that the ones that I'm criticizing were really just emphasizing the point that James makes that the faith without works is dead. And then we must emphasize that there was the same thing as the Lordship. And that wasn't what, if that's all there were to it, there never would have been this case that went on for 20 or 30 years. That wasn't really the issue. There was a real denial. There was this leveling of all covenants. And that's actually the way it was put that all covenants are the same because all involve demands and all involve promises. You know, sure, all covenants do involve demands and all covenants do involve promises. That doesn't try to do anything. The thing is, what role do the works of play and then this thing, is it works? Or is it the crisp? At least I found that that's often the case that you're sort of using the same language and not meaning the same thing. But for some folks, we thought about law what they mean is works in the sense of other obligations. And then instead of the fact that there's always been obligations as long as there's a job as obligation, questions to the obligations, merit something, or the obligations merely part of what's expected even though they don't have it. This point is something, and I keep finding too. When you talk about works, they're very often, I find that I have to student the body. Things, well, there's this covenant that have some commandments in it. And so the new covenant would be a covenant of works because, for example, Jesus says, and he gives us the commandment of love or something. But no, we're not using the word works in the sense of our commandments involved. We're using the term works in the sense of the principle of inheritance. By what principle do you inherit the blessing? And in other words, what function does your obedience to the commandments of God perform? Does your obedience to the commandments of God perform the function of earning the kingdom of heaven? And that's the works principle, OK? If your good works, if your obedience perform the function of validating the confession of your mouth, as James puts it, then that's not the works principle. And that's consistent with the principle of grace. But yeah, thanks for those clarifications, yes. Is it possible that these kind of obligations that he's talking about are really what's going on in this typological kingdom of Israel? And can you demonstrate that that's not the way we should look at it? Yeah, I mean, all that's going on is that it's really just required to validate their faith that we can. And especially then, when we come back to that one again, that's precisely what I put, but right away, the way to do it is just to point to the way that this thing ends. Israel under this works principle, do this, and you will live, gets terminated in judgment. And so that shows that what was operating here was not the principle of sovereign grace, the principle of sovereign grace, it does not fail, it achieves its purpose. At the end of Israel, the desolation, 708D, the kingdom taken from them completely, that whole order fails. And that shows that it was not the principle of sovereign grace. There was operating. This was not something that the active and passive obedience of Christ bought for Israel that they should have that land forever, then they would have, you see. This is something where they were put on their own. Do this and you will live, you see. But then also all the exegetical evidence will try to point out where Paul insists on a huge antithesis between his gospel, which is a faith, and what he says was going on during the law, so that he of course would agree with James, of course. But he didn't agree with the Indian, well, okay.
Just getting back then to what poor and company would argue in alleging that there could not be any covenant of works with Adam. Let's see if I can read. But here, Fuller's refusal to acknowledge a works grace contrast between the Mosaic covenant and the gospel administration, especially the new covenant, is part of his broader insistence that divine human relationship never entails a works principle. Human merit is essential ingredient in the concept of works. Fuller denies the very possibility of human merit anywhere in history, even before the fall. He repudiates covenant theology not only in its recognition of a works principle in the law, but in its identification of God's original covenant with Adam as a covenant of works for claims, there is a continuum of divine grace. Now here is already the abuse of words where he uses the word grace for what's going on there in the original covenant. Fuller claims there is a continuum of divine grace throughout all God's dealings with man, prefall as well as are redemptive. And I see this as an assault on the foundations of the gospel, and that's why I wrote this particular article. So our focus here will not be on Fuller's mishandling of the law, we'll come back to that afterwards, but right now I want to concentrate on the fallacies of his notion about the prefall covenant.
As covenant theology recognizes, there is a big difference, not a continuum, but a big difference between the prefall covenant and the subsequent covenant of grace. In the prefall covenant, Adam does not receive the kingdom blessings, but rather a curse if he forfeits God's favor by disobedience. Under the gospel on the contrary, we do receive those blessings in spite of our having forfeited them by sin. That is just one total of the huge antithesis and difference between the two situations. Now grace is of course the term we use for the principal operative in the gospel, the principal that was missing from the prefall covenant. So I just suggested a few moments ago, grace then is the bestowing of blessings despite of the fact that they have been demurited. That's what grace means. That's what the principal that is operating in the gospel, is that principal of grace. So properly defined, grace is not merely the bestowal of unmerited blessings, but God's blessing a man in spite of his demerits, in spite of his forfeiture of divine blessings. Clearly we ought not apply this term grace to the prefall situation. For there was no forfeiture of a blessing so there of course until subsequently, when Adam broke the covenant, but in terms of the terms of the covenant, clearly we ought not to apply it for neither the bestowal of the blessings of Adam in the very process of creation nor the proposal to grant him additional blessings. None of these things contemplated Adam as in a guilty state of demerit. God was not about to provide blessings say for him if he were disobedient, the whole thing is only in terms of obedience. So the idea of grace simply is not present there, simply to offer blessings is not grace if the blessings have to be earned. You see, grace is only if those blessings have already been in the demerit. But here is Adam, he comes from the hand of God. He hasn't sinned, he hasn't demerited anything. And when the terms of the covenant are put to him, he hasn't demerited anything. And so those terms do not involve the idea of grace. And yet this is what foreign company are driven to do is they try to create the illusion of a continuum between the prefall and the redemptive covenants. It's only by this double talk. And that's what it is, it's double talk of using the term grace, obviously in a different sense for the prefall covenant. It's only by doing that that they can be clouded, the big plain contrast that actually exists between the two covenants. So it is not that there is a continuum of grace everywhere, which he suggests that there's grace even before the fall. As I go on to suggest, if you're looking for something that is continuous through all of them, it's the principle of justice, not the principle of grace. Not grace, but simple justice was the governing principle in the prefall covenant. And hence it is traditionally called the covenant of works. God is just, and his justice is present in all that he does. That's true of the gospel administration too. The foundation of grace is again justice. It's only by the obedience of the one, by the satisfying of justice that there is, that then the gift of righteousness for the many. It's only as Christ fulfills that eternal covenant in merits it for us by works, that there can be still of it by grace on us. So what is true in all covenants, what is a characteristic principle in all of God's covenants, is this principle of justice, not grace. Grace is characteristic only of the gospel water, not for the prefall water, but justice was the principle operating before the fall. Do this and you will live. Do this and you will never have an atom. And likewise afterwards for us, we are told to do this and you will live. We don't do it, but our Savior did it for us, but he did it for us. And so it is by the obedience of the one that there is the righteousness for us. So if you're looking for an element of continuity, running through prefall and redemptive covenants without obliterating the contrast between them, there it is, not grace but justice. And keeping with the nature of God's covenant with Adam is one of simple justice covenant theology holes that Adam's obedience in the probation would have been the performing of a meritorious deed by which he earned the covenant of blessings. Now, why doesn't a flooring company want to accept that? I suggest some of the arguments and for the floor thing here, you can read the article which will be made available to you. But it's suggestions like this. They say, man, the creature couldn't do anything meritorious because God is all glorious beforehand. And how can we do anything that we add to his glory if he's already all glorious? So that's the end of that day they feel and therefore man couldn't do anything that would add to God's glory and could possibly therefore earn anything.
That simply isn't the case. And one thing that I observe here, of course, is that if that were true, that is because prior to Adam's activity, God is already all glorious. You can't add anything to his glory. Therefore, you can't do anything meritorious. Now we come down to Jesus, huh? When Jesus comes upon the scene, it's got already all glorious. Of course, he's already glorious. And so if there were any logic and validity to their argument with their respective Adam, it would apply also to Jesus and because God's already all glorious, what could Jesus do that would be meritorious? He couldn't add to the glory of God. That is a fallacy that's operating there that you should be able to see when you apply it to the case of our Lord.
Yes, I'd better not get into an attempt to try to reconstruct some particular person. You as if I, you know, this whole subject, you know, has been the subject of a whole bunch of doctoral dissertations and so on which I've tried to go through the whole history of this dispute in the last 10 or 20 years, different students of mine have gotten into that and done with that. I want to attempt to be a valuing this one. That one, the other one, if I can just stick for the moment to the logic of this thing and then maybe afterwards we can talk with some others who are familiar with that's okay. Sure, go ahead. Yes. Yeah, okay.
You know, that is very commonly said for someone like John Murray would express himself that way and what do we do with the eraser here that throw it away or? That's right, the time. About two or a half years ago. Oh, yeah, okay. Just quickly to answer that question. The way I use it, it was by an act of grace
as you were just putting it. It was through a work of redemption by an act of grace that God brings this package involving national election and typological kingdom and bestows it on Israel. It wasn't something that they deserved. It isn't that they were bigger or better than the Canaanites that is pointed out in the Book of Deuteronomy. It was an act of grace that God set aside Israel to this particular historical status, okay? And that is true. But now, once they are in that status, it's a separate question as to what was the principle of tenure on what did their continued possession of this land that had been given to them by grace to depend and hear then is where the works principle comes into the plate. And now, because it was a works principle midway through the thing, they go into exile. They have broken the covenant. If we were just a matter of sovereign grace as we said, then that covenant couldn't have been completely ruptured where God comes to them and says, you're not my people anymore. Away with you. And that shows it was works principle. Now, it is by a second act of grace that God restores them from Babylonian exile and that's why the restoration from Babylonian exile is often set forth as a second exodus, all right? A second act of grace. But what they are restored to, once again, is the law of Moses. And so history repeats itself. And now they have killed the prophets and that's why they go into Babylonian exile. And now history repeats itself and that they have killed the prophets and now they also repudiate the sun. And so once again, so the element of truth that you're pointing to, yes, it is not something that it is realized as a nation deserved to have this historical privilege. It was an act of grace, but then the question still remains. What was the principle by which they would hang on to or fail to hang on to it? And that's where the principle of works comes in. All right, the other next step does that fuller in company take after they say, well, God's all glorious, you couldn't do anything to act was glory, you couldn't do anything to it. Maritories, let's say for I can say then that they allow, well, maybe you could do something that had some merit to it. But the next step is to say, but look at the disproportion between the reward and the service. They say, man, just in time, the significance on the scale of being that he could do anything you see that would merit eternal life, whatever he could earn. This reward of the eternal kingdom of God is too much that he couldn't have merit. In other words, now they proceed to quantify and they try to quantify the value of the service and the reward and they conclude that this was not a matter of simple justice. This was grace that the reward should be so big was grace, well, again, that's an abuse of the word grace because it still would not have been a blessing that was bestowed on someone who had forfeited the blessing. So it wouldn't have been grace. They should use some other word for it, but divine generosity and being willing. Yeah, but what, yes, and that's what they end up then doing something like that. But what they do is they begin to quantify this idea of justice and to measure the justice of the arrangement that God specifies in his covenant. It's the word of God. God is just, and the covenant is his word that defines a reality. And therefore, the terms of that covenant must be an expression of justice and that should set the thing that this is justice. But what these people are doing is they're setting up some standard of measurement above and beyond God, not in terms of the covenant reality but in terms of some order of nature that they assume ununderlies are preceded the covenant. And in terms of this other measurement, they are supposing that they can judge the justice of God. Now if you do that, if you quantify this business of justice this way, you're going to get into various kinds of trouble. Let me suggest some of the troubles. If you quantify justice, and then you ask the question, what was the merit or the value of our Lord's active and passable beating? Let's take his passable beatings for the moment. What was the value of Jesus' tone? And I think if you ask these people that question, that they would say, oh, it was sufficient. It had enough value to save everybody. That would be their answer. And yet, everyone isn't saved. And now you see what you've done. If you quantify the idea of justice, and you say that the value of Jesus' toning blood was sufficient to save everyone. And God doesn't give them everyone. Then terrible injustice on God's part, you see. You can't quantify the thing. The terms that God expresses, they themselves define what justice is. Let's take another thought and then move on, I guess. They suggest that Adam, as a human creature, doesn't have the significance. Or isn't high enough up on the scale of being, so that anything positive that he would do would have the value of eternal life. That would deserve eternal life. Now, they're going to have the corollary of that, of course, is this. And if Adam doesn't have enough significance, if he's not high enough on the scale of being to do something that would merit eternal life, then he hasn't got the significance to do anything by way of disobedience that would merit eternal death. If the consequences of his activity that simply don't add up to anything eternal, then he didn't deserve eternal death. And if he didn't deserve eternal death, and yet God sends his son into the world and suffers the eternal death in order to save Adam and the rest of the elect. And then look at God again, this guilty of injustice. That he would be imposing on Adam more than his rebellion deserved. And so there are all kinds of problems that you get into on this approach that would deny the possibility of the meritorious and the insistence that everything in their form must have an increasing increase. Well, the sacrificial aspect of the law did bring out, of course, the bottom line, the cross of crisis coming. And in the typology of the kingdom, there is along with the typology of the kingdom and the intrusion judgment and so on, there's the typology of the cult so that the sacrificial system, of course, is pointing ahead to the atonement and so on, and not just the sacrificial system, but in the word of the prophets, huh? The message of grace is not absent, of course, from the Old Testament and in Paul. Although he paints the big contrast between the law and the gospel, still points back to the law and the prophets for the message of justification by faith, and so sure that the message of individual salvation by grace comes to expression in the total mosaic revelation. Well, what we are doing is we're isolating an area here of the typological kingdom that was not expressing or controlled by the principle of grace, but involved to do this, and you will live principle. Well, again, we read this article, but the ultimate, let me just read from this, the ultimate reputation of fuller theology is that it undermines the gospel of grace. All the arguments employed by fuller and sympathizers to prove that Adam could not do anything meritorious would apply equally to the case of Jesus, the second Adam, and as I spoke about the all-glorious business, they also say that where you have a father, son relationship, you must have grace involved and you can't have justice, and you can't have anything really meritorious in the case of a child and his parent, the father, son relationship, so they argue that that, again, it doesn't work when you come to Jesus. There you have a father, son relationship, and if a father, son relationship, you can't have anything meritorious, then Jesus as the son could not have done anything meritorious. So all of their arguments that with a leg that Adam couldn't do anything meritorious would simultaneously prove that Jesus did, and of course, then there's that basic thing that the two Adam's came. If you demonstrate that Christ can do something meritorious, then you have demonstrated that Adam could, because the Adam is the type of Christ, precisely with respect to their function in terms of God's government, or vice versa. If therefore you can prove that Adam couldn't do anything meritorious, then since he is the type of Christ, Christ couldn't do anything meritorious, so this attack on the possibility of meritorious action, and the Adam's part is undercutting the gospel, right at the point of it that Jesus couldn't do anything meritorious, and if he couldn't, you and I are still in our sins. I think that if I'm picking up the perspective is coming in terms of the father's financial relationship, we're trying to interpret the divine relationship between the father and the son from the human person.